


Lost in Memories

by Carmenlire



Series: Flufftober [19]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Immortal Husbands, M/M, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 11:23:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16366955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmenlire/pseuds/Carmenlire
Summary: Settling down into the couch that stretches parallel to one wall of the library, Magnus sets his glass on the side table as he carefully smooths a hand over the object in his lap. He takes a moment, quietly studying the cover of the photo album that’s older than any mundane and has been magically preserved with diligence and care and love.Flipping the cover, Magnus is treated to photos of him and Alec when things were still so new and twice as uncertain. There’s a photo of them having a picnic in Central park and a blurry shot of the two of them outside a long closed club in Berlin.Or, Magnus takes a stroll down memory lane.





	Lost in Memories

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Past

Magnus stretches his arms over his head, wincing as his back cracks in a thousand places. He’s been working nonstop today-- just one of those random Thursdays where everyone needs a rush order completed.

It’s a good thing that he’s always been great under pressure-- and that his clients are always so willing to pay the extra fee for having his work rushed.

Startled to see that the light’s grown dim outside, Magnus checks the clock, shocked to see that it’s almost seven in the evening. He’d ducked into the kitchen to inhale half a sandwich around noon and hadn’t surfaced since.

He stands, carefully moving the half a dozen vials to his pick-up shelf, the place he keeps all of his potions and tinctures and balms that are just waiting for the client. He’s getting ready to go to the living room-- maybe see what there can be for dinner-- when his eyes catch on something in the hallway.

It’s nothing unusual or unpleasant; quite the opposite in fact. Magnus’s gaze snags on a wedding picture taken so long ago that it almost feels like another life.

Magnus has always been a sentimental man, someone who loves to pour a glass of whiskey and settle into his favorite chair as memories wind their way around him, pulling him into a past that’s been as phenomenal as it has been abject misery.

He can’t deny that the past few centuries have been exceptionally good to him, though.

In fact, he hasn’t indulged in a stroll down memory lane in quite some time and with Alec not expected back until much later tonight-- something about a morning meeting in Tokyo-- Magnus does just that.

He walks down the corridor into the living room, heading right for his drink cart. Pouring a generous few fingers of liquor into his etched crystal tumbler, he then goes to the library on the other side of the loft.

Magnus and Alec travel as often as they stand still and they find themselves in New York a few times a year-- spending the rest of the calendar wherever pleasure and business take them. Magnus has a dozen apothecaries set up around the world, in every home of theirs, and Alec regularly visits Institutes far and wide in his leadership capacity.

There’s something about New York, though, that always beckons them back.

Magnus walks to one section of the wall to wall bookshelves that hold personal mementos. Eyes scanning the spines of one shelf in particular, he carefully slides it out of its place before turning towards the middle of the room. 

Settling down into the couch that stretches parallel to one wall of the library, Magnus sets his glass on the side table as he carefully smooths a hand over the object in his lap. He takes a moment, quietly studying the cover of the photo album that’s older than any mundane and has been magically preserved with diligence and care and love.

Flipping the cover, Magnus is treated to photos of him and Alec when things were still so new and twice as uncertain. There’s a photo of them having a picnic in Central park and a blurry shot of the two of them outside of a long closed club in Berlin.

When the light is too low for even Magnus to see, he absently waves a hand, turning on the side table lamps and the half dozen candles on the low coffee table in front of the couch.

He refills his glass at it grows empty once, twice, a third time. He slowly looks through a photo album that holds his love story in it, savoring the memories that float to him as he studies each picture.

Alec has been his for almost three hundred years. The Magnus before Alec would never have been able to dream of something so wonderful. The past years and decades and centuries have been perfect and painful and everything in between. 

There’s been unimaginable highs and tragic lows. Alec’s been by his side for all of it and sometimes it still takes Magnus’s breath away-- when he pauses and looks around their home with the strewn tennis shoes and piles of books and sees the horrendously expensive espresso machine in the kitchen that Alec had just _had_ to have.

Then there are other times when it’s like a vise is squeezing his chest and he feels at once light as a feather and heavy as lead-- when Alec sleepily mumbles something devastatingly romantic into his shoulder or his old ghosts just don’t have their same strength or when he walks through the loft and catches sight of a wedding photo taken in another time with the love of his life.

He doesn’t hear the footsteps in the loft, caught up in memories and whiskey. He doesn’t notice when someone comes to a pause at the door of the library, doesn’t see their expression soften as they take in their husband, their stupidly beautiful husband, smiling down at an album that holds their most priceless memories.

Magnus does, however, look up when that person sits down next to him on the couch, close enough so that their thighs are brushing. He instinctively relaxes into Alec as his husband throws an arm over his shoulders, pulling him that much closer.

“Is there a reason you’re lost down memory lane tonight,” Alec murmurs, planting a soft kiss on the side of Magnus’s head.

Magnus turns to look up at Alec, the most stunning man he’s ever seen even if he has purple bruises under his eyes and his hair's a bird's nest.

Truthfully, his imperfections make him all the more beautiful. 

He tilts his chin up, bumps his nose against Alec’s jaw as he breathes in the remains of Alec’s shampoo and lingering cologne.

“Not particularly,” he says, voice soft. “I finished my work and just wanted to look at some pictures.”

Alec huffs out a laugh as he looks down at the page with photos from when they’d been married around a hundred years. Magnus's gaze is soft and just a touch hazy and Alec knows that his husband's been indulging in the quiet comfort of their library this evening. “Let’s have a look, then.”

The candles are flickering in wax wells as Magnus and Alec spend the next couple of hours looking through the rest of the photo album. They laugh themselves silly at some of the pictures, reminiscing between stuttered laughs and inelegant snorts. They get teary-eyed and affectionate as they see more sentimental photos taken during or after significant events.

They lose themselves in memories, content in the knowledge that there will always be more.

**Author's Note:**

> Catch me on tumblr @carmenlire!


End file.
